Jonesboro moving up to 7A in 2020
Van Buren expected its athletic programs to drop to Class 6A in football and Class 5A in other sports when the Arkansas Activities Association announced its enrollment numbers for the 2020-22 cycle.
Athletic Director Randy Loyd wasn’t disappointed when those numbers were released Wednesday afternoon. Van Buren, the smallest public school in Arkansas’ largest classification for a number of years, will trade games against schools from Northwest Arkansas for games against teams such as Greenwood, Alma, and Russellville.
“We’re really excited,” Loyd said. “This was what we wanted. As much as we love working with the 7A-West football coaches and going up to Northwest Arkansas and playing games, this is for our kids. They are our No. 1 priority.
“I’ve been here 25 years, and we were with those Class 6A schools for two years. I thought we competed well when we were with them, and this drop in classification will give us a better chance to win more championships.”
Van Buren’s move in classification is not a shocker. It was anticipated because the new Little Rock School District high school in southwest Little Rock — a combination of Little Rock McClellan and Little Rock Fair, plus 300 additional
students from Little Rock Hall — was expected to have the enrollment to be 7A for football and 6A for other sports.
Instead, it is Jonesboro that makes the move to the biggest classification. Jonesboro’s average student enrollment in grades 9-11 over a recent 3-year period was 1,362.67, while Van Buren was 1,338.33 and the southwest Little Rock school at 1,235.33.
“We were somewhat anticipating this,” Jonesboro Athletic Director David Daniel said. “Our city has really taken off with its growth and with what Arkansas State has done. We have a very good product here, not only athletically but academically, and we knew this would be a possibility. We’re not shocked by this.
“This will certainly affect our travel and our loss of school time. We’ve been spoiled by having short trips to Nettleton, Valley View, and Greene County Tech, and now our shortest trip will be Cabot. We haven’t shied away from bigger competition because playing them makes us better. We might as well like it now because we’ll be in it for the next two years.”
The new enrollment numbers could lead to the possible split of Fort Smith Northside and Fort Smith Southside into different conferences. The AAA handbook requires the 7A football and 6A basketball schools to have eight teams in each conference, and there are already seven schools in Northwest Arkansas and seven more in the central and northeast parts of the state.
Unless something is changed, it will mean the two Fort Smith schools won’t be in the same conference for the first time since 1980, when Northside was a Class AAAAA school and Southside was in Class AAAA.
“This is interesting,” Fort Smith Athletic Director Darren McKinney said. “It’s not unprecedented, but it’s been generations since our schools have split. We would like to keep them together, but I don’t know if that will happen. We’ll explore all other options and see which way we need to go.”
Pea Ridge is another school that will make its way up into classification as it moves to 5A and takes the place of Huntsville, which drops back to 4A again. It means Pea Ridge will trade games with Gravette, Prairie Grove and Shiloh Christian for games against Alma, Siloam Springs and Clarksville.
Brookland also moves from 4A to 5A and switches spots with Blytheville, while Lamar climbs to 4A and takes over for Lincoln, which drops to 3A. Lavaca and Salem will make the move from 2A to 3A, while Yellville-Summit and Cedar Ridge drop to 2A.
The most significant change in the 2020-22 reclassification cycle for other sports, besides Jonesboro and Van Buren changing places, is Batesville going from 4A to 5A, while Watson Chapel drops from 5A to 4A.